Welcome to The Gluten Free Experience! In my blog you'll find my recipes, tips, secrets and more in order to cook and bake wonderful 100% gluten-free good eats from a 5+ year gluten-free house wife.

Friday, June 22, 2012

General Talk - Another Project

It has been like 15yrs or more since I had the ever famous 3-layer coconut cake by Pepperidge Farm. Not to mention as far as I go, I seem to have different tastes and cravings as I grow older. I use to like coconut when I was younger but never craved anything with it really. This past week I suddenly got a HUGE craving for a coconut cream cake though and as that sprang into my mind, it also came the thought that this is Belgium... coconut cream anything is *not* on the menu any where which means my husband would have never tasted anything like it. *BANG* it was there... I MUST MAKE THIS!

I started my hunt for a recipe but through a week of research I have not found the 'perfect' recipe for this yet. What I did find is 3 different recipes that I'm going to pull different parts from.

One for the cake itself because all the recipes I found wanted to make a yellow butter birthday cake style cake which is WAY too many calories and fat that I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. So I'm opting to make a white butter cake recipe that calls for half the butter, 1 to 1 1/2 cups less flour, a whopping 5 eggs less and half the sugar.

Another one is for the filling. I want to go all out and make my very first layer cake (yes VERY FIRST!) and I want it to be outstanding so I'm pulling a simple coconut cream filling recipe from another coconut cake recipe. This only has sugar, milk, coconut and sour cream in it. I think it will pair perfectly with the choice for frosting that I've chosen.

And of course a layer cake can't be true unless there is a good dose of a good frosting so the 3rd part of a recipe is from yet another one for a cream cheese frosting that only calls for 1 stick of butter instead of 2 and 1 cup less sugar.

When trying to figure out what to do with this, I wanted to try and come up with something that was between the good vs bad line. I didn't want the sugar, over hit of fat (like hello, no gull-bladder any more so that amount of fat is *not* gonna be pretty) or the heaviness that the original yellow butter cake called for, I didn't want the over dose of sugar that some of the fillings called for either. But I also didn't want to totally give up on a great cream cheese frosting for it so I opted for one with a bit less sugar and butter but hopefully with the filling and flaked coconut to go on the outside, it will make enough.

So yea... there is my next project! A 2 or 4 layer Coconut Cream Cake depending on how thick the 2 round cakes come out. I'm beginning to work on it today already but it's a process I must admit. First having to make the cakes that involve a bit more effort then a yellow butter cake would call for due to the whipping of egg whites and what not. Baking them for 20mins and then letting them cool for 10-20mins in their pans, turning them out and letting them cool the rest of the way. Covering them and putting them in the freezer while I prepare the filling and frosting. Then of course putting the thing together and putting it back in the fridge for a couple of hours. It's certainly not a cake you want to attempt on the fly or when you need something 'now'. Mmmm think I should start adding a rating to some of my recipes both on time needed and effort. Wonder how to go about doing that *ponder*.